The Effect of Resilient training on Social Competence and Self-Esteem of Students with Learning disabilities

Learning difficulties can cause negative consequences such as poor social competence and self-esteem in primary school students. Learning problems and disorders are not only related to negative academic results, but they can also negatively affect the mental health and emotional well-being of primary school students. It is worth noting that attention to educational problems and psychological matters of primary school students is necessary to prevent problems in the future. Previous studies and research literature shows that resilient training is an effective strategy, which can result in the empowerment of children. Thus, the current research aimed to investigate the effect of resiliency training on social competence and self-esteem of students with learning disabilities. This study was semi-experimental pre-test, post-test, and follow-up with control and experimental group. The statistical population consisted of 513 third- to fifth-grade primary students with all kinds of learning disabilities who had been referred by the schools to the Center for Learning Disabilities of Bushehr province’s Department of Education in 2016-2017 school year. Of these, using convenience sampling and considering the requirements of the research project, 153 students were short-listed in the first stage. Then, based on the recommendations of previous research, 34 students after the diagnosis of learning disability were selected by psychologists of Bushehr Educational Disorders Center and also a structured clinical interview. They were randomly assigned to two experimental and control groups (in each group of 17). Then, an independent variable (Resilient training) was applied to the experimental group. In the implementation of research after justification and satisfaction of parents of children, the groups were matched with intelligence and other demographic features (such as socioeconomic status, educational facilities, parental education level, etc.). The research tools consisted of Coopersmith’s Self-Esteem Questionnaire (1967), Fellner et al.’s Social Competence Scale (1990), Wechsler's Children's Intelligence Scale, and the Clinical Interview and Resiliency Curriculum of Schwanker et al. (1991). While the experimental group went through 9 sessions of 1.5 hours twice a week, the control group did not receive any training. Repeated measure ANOVA was used to analyze the data through SPSS software version 22 To analyze the variance for repeated measures, we examined the assumptions of this test. Kolmogorov-Smirnov test results showed the normality of the distribution of scores on both research instruments (p>0.05). Mauchly’s Test of Sphericity test results confirmed the equality of variances assumption (p>0.05). The mean of the social competence variable for the control group in the pretest was 16.18, in the post-test, 16.91 and in the follow-up period, was 16.81, and for the experimental group in the pretest, 17.22, in the post-test, 35.46, and the follow up was 35.53. The mean of self-esteem in the control group was 26.27 in the pretest, 27.19 in the post-test and 27.43 in the follow-up phase, and for the experimental group in the pretest 25.19, in the post-test 45.18 and in the stage the follow up was 45.92. The results showed that the F-value in the social competence variable was significant at p<0.001, and considering that the mean of the experimental group in the social competence variable was higher than that of the control group in the post-test and follow-up stages. Also, the findings showed that the value off in the self-esteem variable was significant at the level of p<0.001, and considering that the mean of the experimental group in the self-esteem variable was increased in comparison with the control group in the post-test and follow-up stages. In sum, the results showed that resilience training had an impact on the social competence and self-esteem of students with learning disabilities (p<0.001) and this effect remained stable during the two-month follow-up phase (p<0.001). Since resilience training helps improves individuals’ interactions with peers and increases their resiliency, such training can be utilized as an effective interventional method to develop social competence and self-esteem of students with learning disabilities. The results of current research are consistent with other conducted studies. In other words, children who have a high general resilience, both children and their parents have a favorable opinion on learning problems and less likely to feel a negative impact on their communication.